I’ve been thoroughly enjoy my extended break from MMORPGs to spend time on my first love: single-player games.

With all the games in my Steam library, the one I decided I wanted to replay the most turned out to be Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which surprised even me.

I generally agree that Veilguard is a decent stand-alone game, but is a slap in the face to BioWare’s long-term fans, who waited a decade to see the next installment in the Dragon Age franchise, only to find a civil rights lesson wrapped around a fairly thin plot, combined with a total shift in artistic tone and combat mechanics.

The game’s epilogue underlines that BioWare and Electronic Arts were purposefully abandoning fans of the series in an attempt to capture a new audience. Game sales largely indicate that they failed. Within a week of the game’s release, BioWare announced there would be no further development. No DLCs (though the many unused Eluvians and hinted-at further story developments seemed to promise the opposite). There haven’t even been any service patches to address the many common indexing errors in the game’s menu system.

Another common complaint with Veilguard was the lack of agency afforded to the player in character development. While customizing the character is still very possible, customizing the story and interactions with the companion characters is strictly reduced to variations of “you agree with everything this character wants, thinks, and feels.”

I’m all for representation in video games, but Veilguard seemed to pick its target audience based on what the woke kids of X (formerly Twitter) were arguing about that week. Still, the outcry over “wokeness” is laughable from right-wingers and libertarians who have spent decades trying to cancel civil rights, mentions of slavery in history class, and introduced us to such patriotic movements like “freedom fries.” “Woke” is simply anything that paints straight white Christians as less than perfect.

With all that in mind, I *like* Veilguard. The mechanics are simple to master, even though some battles seem to consist mostly of moving Rook around as quickly as possible, rather than engaging in a battle where mechanics are key. The story is engaging, and does represent a logical next step after the conclusion of Inquisition.

Oddly, my largest gripe with Veilguard is that it missed the mark so much (financially speaking) that the continued existence of BioWare is now in serious question after EA Games sold out to a Saudi investment firm (and Jared Kushner).

There will almost certainly be no further Dragon Age stories.

BioWare is famous for stringing along its fans with teasers and hints years before a game is released. There are sneak peaks of Mass Effect 5 (yes, 5. Andromeda counts), and that game is in pre-production with no schedules release. The earliest possible release date I’ve seen is “somewhere in 2029.”

Andromeda was released in 2017, and Mass effect in 2012. So the development cycle in between games has more than doubled. Like Veilguard, Andromeda disappointed fans with lack of support, no further content, and a slew of awkward immersion-breaking bugs that still persist.

Veilguard needed to be a smash hit to provide a reasonable return on investment. It needed to sell at least 2.5 to 3 million units, but sold 1.5. Regardless of how I might feel about the game, it was a financial flop that threatened an entire studio on the heels of the under-performance of Andromeda.

I generally disagree with the majority of gamers. I think ME3 was better than ME2 (though I admit ME2 had better character animations.) I think Inquisition was way better than Origin. While I enjoy both Veilguard and Andromeda, I can’t claim to like either as much, or better than, their predecessors.

It’s asking a lot of gamers to wait patiently for the next in a popular series of games while the studio teases what will come (in another decade or so). Add crapping all over that loyal audience, and it’s clear someone at BioWare just doesn’t get their own industry.

The best that BioWare can hope for is to be sold off, or to achieve independence. It’s entirely possible they were hamstrung by EA in some way. There’s just no way an investment firm looking to diversify its portfolio isn’t going to shutter a studio that has consistently underperformed with two of its major offerings.

Still, I hope the next N7 day is something other than… funereal.

I’m just about done with Veilguard for the moment. Next up, I chose a game that got great reviews, but is more of a dungeon crawl than I normally like: “Earth’s Shadow.” The game was released in 2023 and still gets “very positive” reviews on Steam. What that means for me, I have no idea. But the game was down to just under $8 on Steam recently, so I decided to give it a try.

I also have Fallout IV, Baldur’s Gate 3 (which I both love AND hate simultaneously), Starfield (which I liked better than expected despite the wafer-thin central story), and Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen installed. I don’t think I’ve ever given Fallout or Dragon’s Dogma a fair chance when trying to get into them previously. This is normally where I would be running to old favorites to get the “disappointed gamer” taste out of my mouth. But I’ve played all my favorites through so many times that there’s nothing new to explore.

At least I know there will be a Cyberpunk 2, but not until the “early 2030s.”

Holy hell. No wonder gaming companies have to make a bazillion in sales with each new release, if all they can do is one game per decade.